113 SPRINGY BANKS ROAD WINDOWS

It is painted in 52 different colors and has no doors inside, and the floors, as in other Arakawa & Gins projects, are bumpy and uneven. Its name was inspired by the twin opposing definitions of the word cleave: to join, but also to separate. The Bioscleave House was commissioned in 1998 by Angela Gallman, an Italian art collector who was friends with Arakawa & Gins. It was unlivable - and unsalable - as a house and existed as a precious (though not that precious, judging by the final price) art object, which is finally how it sold this summer. It doesn’t seem like anyone has really lived there aside from short stays focused on experiencing the novelty of such a strange place. A house meant to fortify eternal life was itself on the brink of death. Rumors circulated that if the house couldn’t find an appreciative buyer, it would face the wreckers developers saw more value in the one-acre site than in the bizarre building on it. The real-estate saga surrounding the Bioscleave House is inseparable from questions about what it even is: A collectible work of art, a private home that happens to come with access to a private beach, an architectural theory manifested in three dimensions, a covetable slice of East End land? “ Oh no, it’s the Bioscleave House again,” a recent story on a Hamptons real-estate blog announced when it went back on the market this spring for $975,000 - a fire sale compared to the house’s asking price of $5.5 million in 2009. “The house is all about experimenting with the human mind, to get you to move out of your comfort zone.” Down to the lumpy floor, in fact. “I take my shoes off, walk over the mounds, and feel rejuvenated,” he says.

113 SPRINGY BANKS ROAD WINDOWS

“The light filters in through these colored, translucent windows and the house was acoustically designed so that when it moves, it creaks in this sort of otherworldly way.” JB D’Santos - the real-estate agent with Brown Harris Stevens who has represented the house since 2018 as it has gone on and off the market - is an enthusiastic fan, and not just because he is tasked with selling the place. “It feels like you’re stepping out of the world and into a different sphere,” says New York’s Amelia Schonbek, the author of the Awl’s 2016 profile of Gins.

It was the subject of magazine stories and had a following among architects and designers.Īnd it is, at least to those who get it, a beautiful place. They built only five projects: the aforementioned Tokyo lofts the Site of Reversible Destiny theme park in the mountains outside Nagoya an installation at the Nagi Museum of Contemporary Art, near Okayama a sculptural staircase at Dover Street Market in Murray Hill and the Bioscleave House (Lifespan Extending Villa), completed in East Hampton in 2008, which they thought of as the fullest and richest example of their thinking. But, of course, such audacious ideas were easier to explore on paper than in the real world.

They published books about their theory of “reversible destiny” and conceived designs, like the 2003 idea to build a utopian megastructure on Tokyo Bay and 2011’s “ Healing Fun House” project. Regular houses reminded Arakawa & Gins, they said, of coffins: predictable, boredom-inspiring, and therefore murderous. So they built spaces - like rainbow-colored lofts in Tokyo in which the floors are bumpy, the light switches are all at different heights, and the walls are different textures - that literally and figuratively keep you on your toes, guessing at what’s around the corner, keeping your mind alert. The architect-artist couple Arakawa & Gins insisted that constantly testing your senses and perception, and using every muscle in your body, would stimulate your immune system. “If you change your environment, you can change yourself,” Gins said in a 2011 interview. The couple had but one mission in life: to fight death through their art. “It’s immoral that people have to die,” Gins once said. Eternal life has fueled many fantasies, but for the artist Arakawa and the poet Madeline Gins, it was doctrine.

113 springy banks road